Ever wondered how to configure a FXS card on an ISR router to register to CUCM using SCCP protocol? It’s actually easier than you might think. The benefits of this type of configuration over a traditional H.323 configuration using dial-peers is that you the customer can manage the device and the extensions assigned to a device without needing to know any IOS commands and change any dial-peers or router configurations, it’s all done through the CUCM interface.
In CUCM it appears just like any other SCCP controlled phone. If you would like to know more information about this type of configuration, it’s benefits, or you just plain need help setting it up, feel free to drop me a line at alex@hannahtechnologies.com and we can set it up for you in a matter of minutes!
Check out the commands below:
On your Cisco IOS Router you will need to configure the following:
! Following Syntax sets up the STCAPP ( SCCP Telephone Control Application ) on the router.
stcapp register capability 0/2/0 both
stcapp register capability 0/2/1 both
stcapp register capability 0/2/2 both
stcapp register capability 0/2/3 both
stcapp ccm-group 1
stcapp
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Today I had an interesting and challenging ticket come my way. The problem was the customer wanted to change their unity ( voice mail only ) accounts to conform to their corporate naming structure. Funny enough, there is no “magic pill” to correcting this problem. In fact, some firms would probably just say it cannot be done, or would tell the customer they would need to delete then recreate their VM boxes in Unity. It absolutely can be done with a little attention to detail.
The first step in the process is to configure the Active Directory information properly. This includes changing the e-mail field which can be found on the General tab, the User Logon Name which is under the Account tab, and the exchange alias ( which is the most important for the purposes of this blog entry ) and is located under the Exchange General tab.
Once I had all the AD account information set up the way I wanted, I had to run a tool located in the Cisco Unity Tools depot, called DG/GC. This tool allows you to sync the Unity accounts to the AD directory manually. By default this sync occurs on a regular time interval ( in most cases it is run every 15 minutes ).
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Every good Voice Engineer I know has seen them, however, very few notice or even pay attention to it, until… it’s a problem for the customer. Today I had just such an event pop up in a handy little trouble ticket from one of our customers. The ticket went a little something like this “When I dial 9, I hear silence until I dial a second digit.”
Any thoughts?
This is a very common problem for a lot of people when they have dial plan overlap. What I mean by this is after examining the customers dial plan for several minutes I noticed that their route patterns were all 9.@ and were assigned route filters. This wasn’t so bad, actually when I can do so, I prefer route filters to traditional patterns as it creates more room for flexibility in your dial plan. As I was scrolling down the route plan report I noticed something that caught my eye, someone had configured a phone with extension 9001 on it. Not a problem you say, I beg to differ!
Call Manager or Cisco Unified Communications Manager has a very strict set of rules for digit interpretation and call routing. Each time you dial a digit Communications Manager will evaluate that digit against all possible route patterns, DN’s, CTI RP’s, etc until it finds a possible match or an exact match. The kicker is when there is a tie, so in our example above the 9.@ and 90 would match, and it wasn’t until the user would dial a second or third character that CUCM could rule out the 9001 extension for the remaining patterns would it present outside dial tone to the user.
This is a very common mistake in a lot of deployments, one that won’t really affect any system functions, but is more of a nuisance to the end user. This very problem is one of the items we look for while performing our UC Assessment and Health Checkups. Contact us today for more information this service if you feel your organization could benefit from a UC Health Check!
Recently while touring one of the Data Centers we routinely maintain we ran across this really “cool” ( no pun intended ) device for in row cooling from APC. It’s called the InRow RD. And I have to tell you after being in the recent heat which the South Eastern United States experienced, these babies felt mighty good on a hot summers day to stand in front of!
The devices are 42U high but are not as wide as a traditional 19” Data Rack, I believe they were 8” wide. This design prevents hot air recirculation, while improving cooling predictability and allowing for a pay as you grow environment. Available in self-contained, fluid cooled, and air-cooled configurations with or without humidity control, these products meet the diverse requirements for closets, server rooms, and data centers. IT operators looking to improve efficiency or deploy higher density equipment will benefit from the modular design of the InRow Direct Expansion products. The intelligent controls of the InRow Direct Expansion products actively adjust fan speed and refrigerant flow to match the IT heat load to maximize efficiency and address the dynamic demands of today’s IT environments.
Each system had six cooling fans which put out some serious cooling power.
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